We gathered our things. I stuffed my notepad and reading glasses back into my bag while he straightened the last of the scattered papers on his desk. The trailer looked almost normal again, like nothing had happened here except a routine budget review.
But everything had happened here. Everything had changed.
Kade held the door open for me, and I stepped out into the February evening. The sun had set while we were inside, and Wildwood Valley had transformed. Strings of red and pink lights glowed along the power poles. The roadhouse across the street was warm and inviting, its windows fogged with the heat of a full house. Laughter and music drifted through the crisp air.
Valentine’s Day. I’d started this morning thinking I’d spend it alone, drowning in paperwork, trying not to be bitter about a holiday I didn’t care about anyway.
Now I was walking across the street hand in hand with a man who’d just agreed to take a chance on me. On us.
Kade’s fingers tightened around mine as we approached the roadhouse door. I glanced up at him, caught the nervous set of his jaw, the way his eyes darted toward the crowded interior.
“Hey,” I said softly, stopping him before we went inside. “We’ve got this.”
He looked down at me, and something in his expression softened. “Yeah,” he said, almost like he was surprised to realize it was true. “I think we do.”
He pushed open the door, and we stepped into the warmth together.
EPILOGUE
KADE
Four years ago, I didn’t believe in love.
Now I was standing in the skeleton of a house I was building for a young couple who’d just gotten engaged, thinking about how wrong I’d been about everything.
The framing was done, the roof was on, but the windows weren’t in yet. February wind cut through the open spaces, carrying the smell of fresh-cut lumber and the promise of snow.
My crew had knocked off an hour ago, but I’d stayed behind to finish some detail work. The Andersons wanted to move in by spring, and I wasn’t going to let them down.
My phone buzzed. Gemma.
Bringing you dinner. Don’t argue.
I smiled despite myself. Four years of marriage and she still surprised me. Still made my chest tight every time her name lit up my screen. I’d spent so long convinced that love was a trap, that relationships only ended in destruction. Turned out I just hadn’t met the right woman yet.
Headlights swept across the plywood subfloor as her car pulled up outside. That was fast. I set down my tools and headed toward the gap where the front door would eventually hang.
She climbed out carefully, one hand bracing her lower back. The bump was still small—only twelve weeks along—but it was there. Visible proof that our family was growing again. Our daughter, Natalie, was three now, probably tucked into bed at Gemma’s parents’ house, blissfully unaware that her baby brother or sister was on the way.
Gemma walked toward me carrying a paper bag that smelled like the roadhouse, her long coat buttoned against the cold. The wind caught her hair, and she laughed, pushing it out of her face.
“Delivery for the hardest-working man in Wildwood Valley,” she said, holding up the bag.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to.” She stepped through the doorframe into the half-built house, looking around at the exposed studs and subflooring. “Nice place. Very open concept.”
“Windows are coming next week.”
“Shame.” She set the bag down on a stack of lumber and turned to face me, her eyes glinting with something I recognized. Something that made my blood heat. “I was hoping for some privacy.”
Before I could respond, she reached up and undid the top button of her coat. Then the next. Then the next.
The coat fell open.
She wasn’t wearing a damn thing underneath.
The coat slid from her shoulders and pooled at her feet like spilled ink. Naked except for her boots and the flush already creeping across her chest, Gemma stood there in the skeletal heart of the house, moonlight and distant streetlight striping her skin in silver and shadow. Her belly curved gently, just enough to remind me what we’d already made together—and what we were still making.